Uchiha Kushina
by Lucillia
Summary: Kushina nee Sasuke has three goals in life: 1. Avenge her clan. 2. Restore her clan. 3. Become the girl her parents had wanted.
1. The World Changes

Though Yuriko who had been five years old at the time wouldn't know it, she had changed the world with a simple decision. Whether or not the change she caused was for the better or for the worse remains to be seen, but she certainly made it more interesting for some of its inhabitants though. How she had changed the world was that during a game of tag, she had turned Left instead of Right.

How could something like this change the world you ask?

Well, it was sort of one of those perfect storm events where the timing had been just right. She had made her Left turn the day before the Uchiha Massacre. Had she turned Left a day earlier, things wouldn't have transpired the way they had, and had she made the turn during the next game of tag that she'd played which was two days later, it wouldn't have mattered because the person she had changed that day would have been in the hospital. Had she simply made a right turn on that day, none of the events that would follow would have occurred either.

**How events played out was thus:**

Yuriko had run left rather than right as she normally would've done, and instead of running through a maze of alleyways until she got caught, she ran right into Uchiha Fugaku while his younger son Sasuke was bringing him the lunch he'd forgotten at home that morning. Instead of backing off and apologizing as any sane person would do after slamming into the head of the Uchiha Clan and nearly knocking him over, she used the the Chief of the KMPF as a climbing structure and perched herself on his shoulders.

Naturally, Fugaku was pissed. Too pissed to speak in fact. It was only the fact that they had been in public that had saved the girl from the hiding of her life since one didn't hit small children that didn't belong to you where there were people watching, especially not small civilian girls. As it was, he had gripped the child's wrist too tightly, and nearly broke one of the bones in the girl's hand as he pulled her off of him and yanked her over to the nearest officer and ordered him to get her out of his sight.

The officer, having been amused by the girl's antics, led the child off without any further punishment.

**What Sasuke saw was this:**

A girl came out of nowhere and started climbing up his dad until she was perched on his shoulders from where she stuck her tongue out at the boy who had been chasing her. Rather than yank the girl off and throw her to the ground, give her a spanking, and yell at her about how she wasn't to do that ever again like he had done to him when he was three after he'd climbed on top of his father's head and got mud and gum in his hair, his father had gently pulled the girl off of him and led her over to an officer who had led her away with a smile.

After thinking about this for a while, and about what he'd seen of his father's interactions with women and other girls amongst other things, he came to a conclusion. His father hadn't been disappointed with him because he hadn't been as good as Itachi, his father had been disappointed with him because he wasn't a girl.

**How Sasuke had added two and two together and got banana had been because his train of thought had ran thus: **

_His father already had one son, and therefore he hadn't needed another. It was clear from the way the man treated them, that he liked girls better than he did boys. Apparently, he was supposed to have been a girl, and had failed his father by not being one._

With his failure in the gender department in mind, and his current lack of knowledge when it came to exactly what it was that made the sexes different keeping him from realizing that what he was thinking of doing was impossible and likely would not be looked upon favorably, he came up with a plan to make his father happy by finding a way to become the girl his father had wanted. The first step in his plan had been to go home and ask his mother about girls. Since his mother had been one, he figured she would know everything about them, including how you became one.

"Why do you want to know so much about girls?" his mother asked after fielding a million questions on them from why they dressed the way they did to what they ate.

"Do you want a girl?" Sasuke asked, deciding that he didn't want to make his mother unhappy by deciding to become a girl to make his father happy, since he liked her more because she liked him more than his father did. His mother had told him many times that she loved him just the way he was, but if his mother wanted a girl too though...

"I did." Mikoto said sadly, coming to the erroneous conclusion that her son was asking for a baby sister, and that she would have to explain why that wasn't going to happen.

"What happened?" Sasuke asked, feeling sad when he saw what he took to be disappointment on his mother's face, and coming to believe that it was because he hadn't turned out to be a girl, and that the stork he'd heard Mariko's mom talking about had refused to make any more deliveries like it had at Mariko's house.

"After Itachi, I had a hard time having you. After I had you, I learned that I couldn't have anymore babies." His mother said sadly.

When she noticed that Sasuke looked like he was blaming himself for the fact that he couldn't have a little sister, and was starting to cry, Mikoto decided to cheer him up with a funny story. This turned out to be a bit of a mistake however.

"You know." his mother said with a bittersweet smile as she recalled times long past with a friend she had been growing distant from before the friend had died, because their lives had been carrying them in two different directions. "When I was expecting you, I thought you were going to be a girl, and one day, friend of mine and I went out and bought up every little pink item we could find. When you were born, we had to use Itachi's hand-me-downs and give everything to a cousin of mine who was expecting around then."

"You know, if you had been a girl, you would have been named after my friend." his mother continued sadly, remembering Kushina's surprise over the fact that she had Sasuke, and that Sasuke was a boy rather than the girl they thought he'd be. Despite the fact that she hadn't been known for it, Kushina had rather tactfully avoided the fact that she'd thought she'd had yet another miscarriage when she hadn't heard the announcement about Sasuke's birth since Fugaku hadn't made as big a deal out of it as he had Itachi's. That last time she'd seen Kushina had been the first time in several months since her duties towards her clan had taken up much of her time, as had Kushina's work as the Hokage's unpaid cook, housekeeper, secretary, and Advisor.

"What was your friend's name?" Sasuke asked, pulling his mother out of her musings.

"Kushina." his mother replied sadly. "Her name was Kushina."

Had these events and this conversation taken place a week or even a day earlier, nothing would have really changed in Sasuke's life, and therefore the world would not have changed in the slightest. Sasuke would have been caught dressing in clothes that belonged to one of his female cousins, and his parents would have "corrected" his behavior. As it was however, virtually all of the Uchiha Clan was killed before Sasuke could be caught dressing in gender inappropriate attire and have a discussion with his family that would end with him swearing that he'd never do something like that again, and Sasuke ended up being left with a burning desire to avenge his clan, and the gnawing guilt over the fact that his parents had wanted a girl and had gotten him instead.

**Edited 4/29/13**


	2. Kushina and Those Around Her

The first clue that Sasuke's peers had that something else had been flipped in SasukeLand aside from the near 180 degree turn his cheerful personality had taken had been the hairclip. Had Sasuke's mother's clothing not been packed away into storage along with most of the belongings of everyone else in the clan, chances were that Sasuke would have shown up to his first day at the Academy since the Massacre with more than the hairclip to mark his ambitions to womanhood.

Nobody really payed all that much attention to the hairclip despite the fact that it was rather sparkly and had what looked like real diamonds set in it however, as other students had shown up wearing far stranger before, up to and including the time Naruto had shown up wearing a sparkly pink leotard and an orange cape. Everyone noticed when Sasuke attempted to join the girls when they split off for their Kunoichi classes however, and the class' new Instructor - a young man who was still in his teens named Umino Iruka - quickly grabbed the boy before he could join in on the flower arranging lesson. Despite the fact that he got clawed and bit for his efforts, Iruka dragged Sasuke kicking and screaming over to where the boys were being given a lesson in carpentry, in case they had to pass themselves off as laborers during a mission.

Most people would think that many of the lessons the girls were taught during their special Kunoichi classes, such as flower arranging and the like, would be useless for life as a Kunoichi, and that they were there merely for tradition's sake since they had been part of the curriculum since the Nidaime had founded the Academy. This wasn't entirely so however, as Kunoichi were expected to be able to pass themselves off as civilian women from any social strata at a moment's notice, and part of that was learning a traditional art that, while becoming considered to be exceedingly old fashioned and out of date amongst the general populace as a whole in these modern times, was still something of a hobby for the upper middle class or the rich.

Sasuke, who had not yet realized the difficulty and the likely impossibility of the path he had chosen to take, had decided that taking the Kunoichi classes would be his first step in becoming the girl his parents had wanted him to be since the Kunoichi clases were reserved for girls alone. Of course, getting around his homeroom teacher in order to attend said classes was another matter entirely...

The second clue those at the Academy had been given that something else was off in SasukeLand aside from trauma from the Massacre had been when he'd started signing his homework with a different name upon his return to said Academy. There had been some small bit of confusion for Iruka over who this Kushina person was until one of the Instructors who had worked with Sasuke's class before Iruka had started teaching recognized Sasuke's handwriting and clued him in. Any subsequent attempts he made at getting the boy to sign anything with the name he'd been given at birth were made in vain. Rather than getting Sasuke to sign his name on his work properly, he had instead convinced the boy that there was a need to go to the registrar and have his name changed on the class' roster.

Every time Iruka saw the name Uchiha Kushina below that of Uzumaki Naruto - which had him frowning as something about the name in relation to Naruto's was niggling at the back of his mind - he would let out a frustrated sigh and make his way to the Academy Registrar's office in order to have it corrected. He was sure that Sasuke would eventually give up and that whatever the hell sort of phase he was going through would pass before he graduated the Academy. It didn't really bear thinking if it didn't, because anyone who worked with Sasuke after he became a ninja would give him funny looks over his choices at the very least, and would more than likely pick on him, which would likely end up triggering a violent episode.

The Third and most major clue that there was something other than trauma from the Massacre going on with Sasuke, which had even the most unobservant villagers sitting up and taking notice, had been when the boy had finally used his allowance from the trust fund which had been set up for him when he'd inherited the pooled assets of the entire Uchiha clan to purchase a new wardrobe. The boy still dressed like a typical Uchiha, but the gender of the Uchiha he dressed like now as compared to before had been reversed. Rather than sticking to his navy blue top with Uchiha crest on the back and navy blue shorts combo, the boy had started wearing skirts and dresses in the rather conservative shades that were favored by the women of the clan, most often wearing a navy blue skirt and low-collared navy blue top with a mesh shirt underneath.

This last had helped Sasuke unknowingly dodge a bullet, and gave Neji yet another reason to curse his fate. The budding fanbase that had been forming amongst a group of his female classmates who were just beginning to depart the "boys are icky" stage rapidly vanished after Sasuke had started dressing like a cousin of his whom he'd admired when they collectively decided that he was weird rather than cool and tragic. Since Sasuke was out of the picture, they turned their focus on the cool and handsome boy in the year ahead of them who had the bonus of being older, more than doubling Neji's completely unwanted fanbase.

Iruka, who was rather new to the whole teaching gig, was at a loss as to what to do about his student, seeing as the therapist he'd spoken to about Sasuke had marked the boy's behavior down as "I've got ninja who've watched their teammates be tortured to death before they themselves have been tortured to near insanity. I've got ninja who've been brainwashed into turning against their own village, and a ninja who'd been given a post-hypnotic suggestion that had caused him to kill and eat his own children, and you come to me with this?!". Try as he might with as few resources as he had however, there was nothing he could do to correct his student's behaviour, as the child continued to insist that he was a girl named Kushina.

The new name was the least of his worries when dealing with the boy, since there weren't any laws against using an alias for non-criminal activity, so, there was really no point in getting into a struggle with the boy over a non-issue, since Sasuke could technically use the name Kushina whenever he wanted to as long as he wasn't committing a crime while using it. That, and the Academy registrar was getting sick of the sight of both of them.

After the second time he'd tried, he'd learned from the Academy Superintendent himself that he couldn't ask Sasuke to go home and change, since what he was wearing technically didn't go against the Academy's dress code which was remarkably permissive. Thanks to the wildly varying dress that had been adopted by the various ninja clans over the years, the Academy dress code had basically been boiled down to "As long as it covers the genitals". Boys dressing in women's clothing and vice versa wasn't even covered.

In the end, after he'd been thwarted at every turn by the boy and his supporters who likely found Sasuke's behavior amusing at the very least, he decided to adopt a wait-and-see policy in regards to Sasuke, hoping that it was some sort of phase that the boy would grow out of, rather than a sign of something major lurking beneath the surface. He didn't want to potentially ruin the child's future career by conflating the issue with the whole Massacre thing and calling the psych team in for something that could turn out to be relatively harmless and stem from something other than trauma from the Massacre. It wasn't as if he hadn't seen "Kunoichi" with five o'clock shadows before. They generally weren't well accepted within the ranks however, and he didn't want to see that happen to Sasuke. But, fighting the boy over it had caused him to become even more stubborn and resentful, which was completely opposite to the effect he wanted.

In the village outside the Academy, there had initially been a great deal of gossip about Sasuke and the possible reasons for his gender confusion, as it had all the elements of an interesting story, but the whispers had eventually died down when someone pointed out that he was nothing new, as the Uchiha had had a similar family scandal at least once a generation, with the latest being a second cousin twice removed of "Kushina's". The civilian boys in the village and even some of the younger Genin rather quickly learned that picking on Sasuke was a bad idea, and generally didn't try it a second time. While Sasuke wasn't on Itachi's level, he was quite talented, and had several years of clan training under his belt. Other than a few off-color comments, the men in the village generally left Sasuke alone, because they didn't want the trouble they'd get in if they messed with the "Last Uchiha".

Amongst the Ninja ranks, word of Sasuke's life choices made its rounds and, as it was irrelevant to their lives and increasingly became old news, it was forgotten in favor of things that were more relevant to them by all but those who dealt with Sasuke on a daily basis. Forgetting things that would be practically earth-shattering to others but irrelevant to oneself or one's current mission, was a trait that was common amongst ninja, and seemed to be handed down to their children, with an extreme example of this being one Uzumaki Naruto who had forgotten things during his life that would have had the Intelligence department salivating had they known the information existed.

As for Sasuke's - who shall henceforth be known as Kushina - Academy class, well, as the years passed, the students all but forgot that there had once been a boy named Sasuke in their class despite Iruka's constant efforts to remind them in hopes that it would cause Sasuke to stop what he was doing if everyone treated him like the boy he was. It was completely understandable that most of the students didn't mentally associate Kushina with Sasuke though, considering the fact that Kushina seemed to be a completely different person from the cheerful and helpful little boy who had picked up the moniker of brown noser which had never been used to his face because of who his clan was, and who he was within that clan. As for Kushina, as far as the students in Umino Iruka's class were concerned, she was that weird girl who sat by herself, scowling at everybody when she wasn't giving Naruto strange looks or showing off during weapons or Taijutsu practice. Just about everybody was envious of her talent, but, aside from Naruto who challenged just about everybody, they were too afraid to approach her in order to challenge her in case she snapped.

As for why Kushina gave Naruto those "strange looks" that her classmates noticed and commented on, there was a bit of a story behind that, and - contrary to what the class seemed to think - it wasn't because she had a crush on him. The source of those strange looks had been a photo album. It was possible that the evidence of Naruto's parentage lay forgotten amongst the pages of dozens of photo albums across Konoha, and the Uchiha had happened to possess one of them. Had Kushina remained Sasuke, this album would likely have gone forgotten after Itachi's face had been scratched out of all of the pictures since it had been more of a "friend" album, and there had been another album that had contained photos that were exclusively of the family together that he would have spent more time looking at.

While Kushina had been going through all of her mother's photo albums, scratching out Itachi's face wherever she found it, she found a photograph which had been labeled with the name her mother would have given her herself had she been the proper sex at birth. In the picture was a pair of Academy students, a slightly girly looking blond boy with blue eyes who was looking at the camera and smiling, and a girl who looked like a red-haired version of Naruto who was glaring daggers at the boy in a manner that was entirely Naruto. It was quite obvious to her that the two were Naruto's parents. A further search of the album revealed that that wasn't the only picture that her mother had of one or both of Naruto's parents. In all of the ones of Naruto's mother, the girl and later woman was doing something that was very Narutoesque. Every time Naruto did something stupid, something that resembled what his mother was doing in her mother's pictures of her, Kushina would look at him and wonder exactly how and why their mothers had been friends.

And so, things continued for nearly four years. Towards the end of her days at the Academy, Iruka eventually gave up on changing Kushina's mind about being a girl, since every method he attempted including giving her the straight facts on what tended to happen to transgenders amongst the ninja ranks - especially when they got into enemy hands - had failed. The villagers moved on to better and juicier topics of gossip, treating Kushina according to their views on transgenderism which was either positive or negative or everything in-between. The Ninja didn't pay too much attention to Kushina other than to do the standard threat assessment as they passed her on their way to other business, unless they had business with the child who was shifting from the "male" category to the "female" category in their minds as they marked her in their mental files. At the Academy, things were both the same as they would have been had Kushina remained Sasuke, but different as well. Kushina was as cold as ever, at the top of her class, and had Naruto constantly trying to outdo her, but then again if you put Hinata at the top of the class, Naruto would have tried to outdo her too. However, rather than just being unpopular with the boys who had disliked the post-massacre Sasuke for his attitude and the fact that he was constantly showing off, Kushina wasn't all too popular with the girls either, because they thought she was a creepy stuck-up bitch.

**Edited 4/30/13**


	3. Graduation Approaches

Kushina masked the small bit of amusement she got as she watched her sensei fly backwards under the power of a massive nosebleed as the impromptu Henge test had turned into yet another opening for Naruto to pull one of his infamous pranks. This time, Naruto had turned into a naked woman who looked to be either in her late teens or early twenties. The near perfection of the technique revealed a large amount of research on Naruto's part. Whether the smoke around the private areas was for modesty or to cover a lack of knowledge on what the female anatomy looked like had yet to be determined however. With children her and Naruto's age, it was a mixed bag since some were ignorant, some had siblings of the opposite gender that they might've walked in on, and some may have already "experimented".

She knew that she was currently physically male, but she would be correcting that as soon as she could make a complete job of it. She'd looked into the possibilities offered by Naruto's favorite Transformation trick, but had dismissed them because - aside from the fact that it couldn't be maintained 24/7 - it didn't give her what she wanted. She'd done a great deal of research, and currently, there was no known Jutsu, Seal, or medical technique that would physically make her the female she should have been born as, and leave her able to bear the children she would need to give birth to in order to restore her clan.

One day, after she had killed It- That Man whom she'd once called brother, she would find the secret that would enable her to turn into the person she should have been in the beginning, the girl her parents had wanted, and she would have many sons and daughters. When that time came, she planned to enlist the help of one or more donors for the whole baby thing, because she had not found herself attracted to any of the males in the village, or any of the other females either for that matter. The idea of sex in and of itself didn't particularly attract or repulse her, and despite the off-color remarks that had been directed at her, was mostly indifferent to the concept of intercourse.

Coming out of her musings, she narrowed her eyes as she caught the Umino looking in her direction and sighing. She knew exactly what his issue was and wished he'd drop it. The man had said that she was doing this for all the wrong reasons and that it would just lead to trouble, but she couldn't think of a better reason than to be what her parents had wanted her to be in the first place. It wasn't like she'd been particularly attached to being a boy when she was younger, so it wasn't really all that great of a loss as far as she was concerned.

Turning her attention back to the lesson, she watched as Watari Noriko finished her transformation, completing the test that Naruto had caused by being his dumb self and provoking the teacher yet again after pulling another one of his stupid pranks. The only reason she could think of for why their mothers had been friends was that opposites attracted. It was understandable that they started to grow apart in later years, especially if her namesake had remained like her son well into her adulthood.

* * *

I should've known there was a reason Obito was a little too comfortable disguising himself as a girl during that one mission." Kakashi said as he looked at the picture of his third potential student whose long spiky hair which had failed to be tamed by a pair of jeweled hairclips made him look a bit like a younger version of the statue of Uchiha Madara which was at the Valley of the End.

Rather than being out at the memorial stone talking to his sensei and Obito like he'd usually be doing at that hour when he wasn't on a mission, Hatake Kakashi was reviewing the files he'd been given on a number of Academy students. He would be testing three of these students in little more than a week, and he needed to know which buttons to push.

The teams had mostly been set before the year was even half over, but since Kakashi had been assigned the wild card team this year, he had more files to review than the other sensei. It was almost a given that he would be teaching Uchiha Sasuke aka Kushina, Haruno Sakura, and Uzumaki Naruto, but there was always a possibility that the graduation exam could end up changing things. Considering the point spread, it was possible that Aburame Shino might take the Rookie of the year spot, and Yamanaka Ino might take the Top Kunoichi spot, as they were close enough behind the two in the top positions that there might be an upset. At the bottom of the class, there were a couple potentials, especially if Naruto failed his graduation exam for a third time.

Turning his attention back to the file in front of him, he started to read. He wasn't too sure about Sasuke, who was insisting he be called Kushina and treated like a girl. About the only reason he hadn't kicked the crap out of the Uchiha boy for taking Kushina-nee's name was because he knew that Kushina-nee would've found it funny as hell. Had she still been alive, she would've been dressing Sasuke in pretty little dresses and doing his hair, chattering about anything and everything that came to mind as she did so, completely disregarding the boy's parents' wishes on the matter.

Rin likely would've joined in on the fun and painted Sasuke's fingernails and toenails. Rin had had a rather steady hand when it came to nailpolish, and could do a salon quality job in under a minute. He knew that for a fact, because he'd watched her paint Obito's toenails while he was asleep.

Obito and Minato-sensei would've likely stood in the background snickering as they imagined Fugaku's reaction to his son's Make-over. After the fun was over, Minato-sensei would've likely sat Sasuke down and told him that he was willing to support his life's choices, and that he could come to him if he needed support. Obito would've continued to laugh, but then again, he would also have gotten himself beaten up defending Sasuke from their older relatives and anyone else who might've had an issue with the boy.

Fugaku however would've been furious enough to strangle someone - quite likely Obito - for allowing his younger cousin to be put in women's clothing.

Realizing that he was unable to focus, Kakashi set the Uchiha child's file aside and decided to deal with the issue and his potential approach to it later. Dealing with the Uchiha would be tricky, and not only because the kid had obvious issues aside from that pride that most members of the clan were born with. There were a number of political aspects to his being assigned as the boy's teacher as well. That, and he'd been ordered to encourage the child to reproduce.

Deciding that it would be easier to deal with since her issues were likely far simpler than those of the Uchiha or Minato-sensei's son who was still too painful to look at, he pulled Haruno Sakura's file towards him. Haruno Sakura had nearly graduated last year and ended up on Gai's team, but her mother had prevented her from taking the graduation exam a year early, and had actually locked her in the house on the day of the test. The same had happened to the Yamanaka girl whose father hadn't wanted her anywhere near the Hyuuga boy who seemed to be somewhat mentally unbalanced, but not too unbalanced to become a shinobi.

Since she seemed to be a fangirl, albeit one that had been smart and skilled enough to graduate early in order to grow closer to the object of her affections, he could base his approach on that.

* * *

Umino Iruka sighed as he graded the last pieces of homework that his students would ever turn in. Tomorrow was the Academy Graduation Exam, and he was growing increasingly apprehensive as it approached. Two students were of particular concern to him, Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha "Kushina". Naruto was of concern to him because it was the boy's last chance since the child had rather foolishly attempted to graduate early twice and failed both attempts. You only get three chances, and then you're done. As for why he was worried about Kushina, he was worried because it was a given that the Uchiha boy would graduate, and when he did, the trouble would start.

While many shinobi found cross-dressing and the like to be a non-issue, or a minor matter, most others looked down on it. Those who identified as the opposite gender, especially males who identified as females, tended to be picked on quite often, and were occasionally on the receiving end of violence from their own comrades as well as the enemy. While shinobi didn't generally kill other shinobi over such things, they have come close at times, and there had been a number of slightly suspicious friendly fire accidents over the years.

Even more worrisome to Iruka was the fact that he didn't know Kushina's potential sensei's views on the matter, he and was afraid that the boy would get it from his sensei as well as his future colleagues, which could drive the boy either to suicide or homicide considering the boy's other issues, and the repressed anger that was obviously just waiting for the right trigger to cause it to explode.

He hoped to god that Naruto ended up graduating, and not just for Naruto's sake. Odds were that the boy would be Dead Last, which would place him on "Kushina's" team, and that was the best possible option for "Kushina", since the boy simply did not care that "Kushina" had been born male.

"So, do you want to get a drink?" Mizuki who'd taken and corrected a stack of work while he'd been lost in thought asked, pulling him out of his musing.

"Sure, I could use one right about now." Iruka replied with a smile, glad to have his best friend assisting him.

"You're buying!" Mizuki yelled, as he dove out the window and raced for the bar.

Laughing, he pulled his vest off of the back of his chair and chased after the other man. While Mizuki often put his foot in it, accidentally pressing buttons without realizing it, he also always knew what to say to make him feel better when he was down. He couldn't ask for a better friend.


End file.
